Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to network selections in the field of wireless communications, and more particularly, to apparatuses and methods for Wireless-Fidelity (WiFi) network selection.
Description of the Related Art
With growing demand for ubiquitous computing and networking, various wireless technologies have been developed, and among all these wireless technologies, the Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), based on the IEEE 802.11 standards, is a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology which is widely adopted and very popular for the advantages of low cost/effort and high bandwidth. A WiFi network is typically implemented as an extension to wired Local Area Networks (LANs) and is able to provide the last few meters of connectivity between a wired network and mobile or fixed devices. For example, by establishing a WiFi network in the office environment, network resources, such as printers, file servers, modem banks, e-mail servers, etc., may be shared among the employees, while maintaining the distributed computing power for employees or workstation computers. To an increasing extent, the benefits of establishing a WiFi network are now available for the household environment as well.
More than often, a mobile device may detect several Access Points (APs) in an area. Mobile services may be obtained after connecting to one of the detected APs automatically or by user selection. However, the mobile device generally switches from a currently connected AP to another AP only when the connection to the currently connected AP is lost. Also, the mobile device will stay with the same AP, regardless of whether the throughput of the AP becomes poor and whether there may be other APs available with higher throughputs. As a result, the mobile device may not maintain an acceptable throughput from the currently connected AP, and a user may experience serious delays with the wireless services.